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Topic: Alchemy Records (Read 5325 times)

Following on from finding out that Jojo sells lots of Alchemy Records releases via ebay, I wanted to start a thread to try and gather some discussion of Alchemy Records and recommendations from its catalogue.

Any suggestions for personal favourites, must haves, duds, clunkers; or simply musings or ramblings related to the label are more than welcome.

Personally I've seen Hijokaidan live once at Instal a few years ago and have seen Jojo Hiroshige and Junko solo and in a few different groupings at a couple of festivals and have really enjoyed them everytime. In particular I liked Jojo and his solo guitar and vocals set also at the same Instal festival and his guitar playing in various guises, so something along those lines would be good.

As you mentioned, JOJO's solo stuff is fairly good. They have reissued a good deal of the Hijokaidan stuff as well - which is very good of course.

I like their Night Gallery compilations (through Vol. 3 right now). Vol. 1 is fairly well known acts (LSD-March, Up-Tight, Miminikoto, Doodles) and Vol. 2 & 3 have a lot of bands I have never heard of before. It gives me a nice database of bands to search for.

Here's a list of some of my favorite bits of their catalog, I've obviously not heard everything and left out reissues. Note that I'm not in the "everything ever released by Hijokaiden / Merzbow is essential camp" so I basically cherry picked on those. Interested to hear others' thoughts.

I like their Night Gallery compilations (through Vol. 3 right now). Vol. 1 is fairly well known acts (LSD-March, Up-Tight, Miminikoto, Doodles) and Vol. 2 & 3 have a lot of bands I have never heard of before. It gives me a nice database of bands to search for.

I was thinking of picking those up too..but was not sure if the material is exclusive or just compiled of stuff already out there?

I will have to find the boxes / obis / disks for those and take a look. Off the top of my head - the Up-Tight track is an edit of sorts of Sweet Sister which occurs in various incarnations on a few of their releases.

This performance itself seems similar to one that is on the Sweet Sister Session CD-r but really, I will need to look closer to give a definitive answer. I can't particularly recall what LSD-March performs on there, but I will let you know...

I was thinking of picking those up too..but was not sure if the material is exclusive or just compiled of stuff already out there?

From what I remember reading, all the material on the Night Gallery discs is exclusive.

I highly recommend the first volume- a GREAT compilation. The Chouzu songs are probably my favourites on there- such a lonesome, melancholy vibe they create. Highly beautiful. The Miminokoto contributions are also really good, though one of the songs crops up in a superior (IMO) version on the first Invisible Pyramid comp on Last Visible Dog- it features some awesomely ragged guitar playing.

Not wanting to taunt you Silvum and Ehtylboj, but I got a copy of the Chouzu album (self-titled, RNCD-008) from Volcanic Tongue this week and have been listening to it most nights - it's very nice indeed.

I did ask VT if they had any further copies, but unfortunately they said not. I paid £15, but think it is worth trying to track down if you like their melancholy vibe. I guess I was just lucky to spot it on the VT website and get an email off before it disappeared. Sorry not to bear better news though.